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The Ledgers of Baldr: 4E430-4E59
Actions Hall of the Five Gojac comes back from his soul-searching journey refreshed. He goes straight to his study and sits down at his impressively ancient desk. He pulls out a blank ornately bound book and puts a quill pin to its first page. "-------------Recollections from the Age of Bones-------------------" "----------------------By Gojac the Creator------------------------------" (1: The beginnings of a culture megaproject) Kellus and Garma sit at a large oaken breakfast table. Spindly humanoids stand behind each of them with a pitcher of water and a plate of biscuits. Kellus finishes chewing his boiled egg and breaks the silence. "Ok, so two words. The first word is 'weaponized'." Garma looks at him. "And the second word?" Kellus grins. "That's the best part about the first word. It doesn't even matter what the second word is. All we need is the word 'weaponized'." "True. Does this have a point?" "I'm just pointing out that I could weaponize pretty much anything you hand me." Garma squints at him. "Are you willing to put money on that?" Kellus reaches into his robes and pulls out a sizeable bag of gold. "40 gold says I can weaponize anything you hand me." After much deliberation, Garma gives Kellus a 8"x11" sheet of parchment. (2: Weaponize paper) Curious as to whether one could Actually weaponize paper, Garma tries it herself. (3: Also weaponize paper) Rucahn stands up for the first time in a long time. "There are things we should change," he says to no one in particular. He wanders around Liosa, making small changes to the flow of life. He gives a young Mulakkan a pep talk. He cuts down a dead tree in a dry forest. He brings food to a hungry and isolated Ignati tribe. He sits down with a buding Ignati revolutionary and has a long and personal discussion with him in which he convinces him to become a pacifist. He moves a bird nest to a more stable branch. (4: Culture) Stavengar FINALLY deciding that it is time to finish the god damn adamantium mine, dwarves throw themselves into the mines below Stavengar, driving towards that silky sweet adamantium goodness. (1 income). Work begins on the Olthoi, a great cathedral venerating all the gods, both the original dwarven pantheon and the newer additions. (2 culture.) Looking towards Manuk with dread, and remembering the disastrous conflict amid the sands, the Senate decides that soldiers must be raised, to protect Stavengar and serve as part of the PADO defensive task force. Therefore, Legio I Incudem is reformed (3 raise army), and the Senate begins the construction of supply depots to aid in the raising of future forces. (4, bonus to recruitment) Ashelani Len-Legas reports the fall of Legaros as it happens. Scenes of gleaming metal shells stomping through crowded Legarosan streets flash through the minds of the proto-queens, crushing those too slow to get into homes or side allies. Attempts of rebellion, as simple as a piece of fruit, are met with a loud woosh and a collapsed section of housing as the compressed air guns suppress the 'threats'. Despite the Derultian assurances, Len-Legas sees the giant eagles overhead and insist that the Queens raise an army to fend off an attack that could come at any time. (raise army x1) In the meantime, the Hivemother presses on Len-Scholus to complete the plaguehopper variant, so as to have it prepared for combat sooner rather than later. (military tech, x1) Unsatisfied with their current borders, the Queen orders Len-Queen Scholus to design a technique for the chute worms which will allow them to aid in the expansion of the Hive. Scholus deides that by increasing the metabolism of the chuteworms, they may do more than simply move packages faster throughout the hive, but might even be able to move relatively quickly themselves. This new technique will allow them to move to a desired area rather than grow out to it, whereupon they will distribute the workers and supplies for the expansion. (bonus to expansion x2,) Legaros War has come to Haven. As the Derultian war machine continues its brutal occupation of the capital city, the last remnants of the Legarosan government attempt to rally the refugees hiding in the hills for one last stand, in hopes of holding the invaders back for a time. Most notable among these is the minister of trade, Dromand, who suddenly seems to snap out of his addled state in time to deliver an impassioned speech to the refugees around him. (Raise Army x3) While most of the citizens fleeing Haven ran to the hills, one group boards the First Fleet, and, under orders from Tha'r'olk, sets sail for the northern coast of Western Continent. At least this way, they reason, Legaros can survive if Haven falls (Expansion/Relocation 4) Derult The Grinner has been lost in the action of the War for Manuk, but he reemerges at last after the walls of Haven come down. Before invasion was formally declared, The Grinner was dispatched by GE001 to acquaint himself with the diverse population of Legaros, and to feel out any potential sympathizers with Derult. In a matter of days, he puts together a small network of outlaw rusted Legarans, many of whom were old friends. This group- known as The Rusted Hand- became instrumental in preventing Legaros from organizing an effective defense. The Hand successfully infiltrated Legaran intelligence, planting false leads that Derult was planning an "Underwater War Railroad" that could somehow only be countered with a strong navy. GE001 is so impressed with the Rusted Hand's successfulness that he reforms it into a static special-operations group designed to weaken enemies before battle is joined (Military Research). Although most of his work deals with other Derultians, his mission gives The Grinner his first chance to interact with non-mechanical beings. He takes an immediate disliking to humans and dwarves- one look at his hideously carved smile and most of them immediately look away. The Grinner can't stand this- if he's to trust someone, he needs to be able to see their eyes. Orcs are better, but he quickly becomes disinterested in their primitive culture and lowbrow sense of entertainment. It is the Ignati- the dragon-men- that he likes best. He is impressed with their bravery and instincts, and the ease at which they overlook his hideous features. The Grinner had always been an indifferent flyer, but under the guidance of the Ignati his skill improves dramatically. He spends many long hours aloft, solidifying friendships in the process. Recognizing their value, he secures a promise from Central that Derultian command will give the Ignati- and the other free races of Legaros- fair treatment (Culture x2). With the war effort winding down, Central also looks to expand southwards (Expansion). Mu'lakka After the colossal failure of the business venture on the Big Island, the tourism department sets its sights eastward. Keeping abreast of current events, particularly ruthless travel agents recommend a trip to the war-torn reaches of Legaros, advertising thrilling action and brutal devastation for the cutting-edge traveler. The experience is available for the low price of 50 rak'mints a night, with telescopes, binoculars, and other amenities to improve the viewing experience available at an additional fee. (Tourism income 1) Upon having it up to here with the insubordination of the Big Island seeking to gain international respect, Kal'rog orders the construction of new airships to quell the churlish natives. (Raise Navies 2,3) , Meanwhile, galley jousting has grown from the scope of Kalrog's personal enjoyment to an exciting new sensation among the sea folk spanning the Confederate Isles and the shores of the Manukan holdings. Teams of shipbuilders and sailors from around the world build the best vessel they can with spare lumber left around the shipyards and old ships that lack any airworthiness are retrofitted with a vast array of assorted spikes, spars, and rams. Pairs battle until there is only one ship remaining, and the teams have til the next week to repair and refit their vessels for the next bout. This week's matchups see some particularly thrilling engagements. An early favorite is the Firebear, a broad-hulled galley that sits low in the water with a large torch mounted on the front, created by wrapping a large beam with cloth dipped in pitch and then setting it alight. It wins its first match, but the Firebear is bested by the Leero Jen'kin, which manages to evade the initial charge and cause a wake sufficiently high to douse the torch with seawater. The largest combatant is a hulking galleon dubbed Nautilisk which makes short work of the first few contestants but is dropped from the lists by a galleass named the Iron Dragon, which manages to use its superior speed and maneuverability to come about and gash a hole in the broadside of the beast. The ship that takes the day, however, is the favorite and defending champion Good Chief Kal’rog. As it narrowly avoids the beastly front of the Sailor’s Folly, oarsmen retract their oars and replace them with flaming ones which are thrust into the side of the opposing ship, which catches fire and is quickly evacuated. Several teams point out that this could be seen as an evasion of the rule that all weapons used by teams must be visible, so a complaint is made to the Galley Jousting Appeals Committee, though it is unclear whether a response will be available before the next week’s bouts. (Culture 4) Kaz'ur 1-2) Adventures of the nameless one! (Planning on writing up a separate post for this) "Kaz'ur," Jasura begins, in her latest presentation to the council, "is no longer a nation of just Ashik. Duyyad was large before the fall of the Ignati, and the refugees swelled it's population by almost twenty percent. With the fall of Legaros at the hands of the Derultians, it is likely that even more non-ashik will flock to our lands, joining us. We are a nation of many races now, and our military ought reflect this. To this end, I propose the following: re-form the Ignati night fighters, drawing from the surviving Ignati soldiers who fled to us after the war. (3, Offensive Military Tech). And allow members of every race to enlist. I believe that slight adjustments to our military doctrine ought to allow for the easier recruitment of soldiers, without sacrificing our combat abilities. To be honest, this probably should've been done as soon as Duyyad was built." (4, Raising Armies Tech)." Results: The Halls of the Five: 14, 20, 20, 12 Gojac sits down to write his opus, demanding that the others not disturb him in the meantime (2 more successes). Meanwhile, at his workbench, Kellus is torn from his task as Garma runs into the room, shouting excitedly. “I did it!” she yells, holding a piece of parchment above her head. “weaponized paper!” Kellus curses loudly. His version or weaponized paper was a day behind schedule, and also, he suspected, Garma had been manipulating time again to give herself a distinct advantage. “Alright,” he says, slamming his hands down on the table. “How does yours work, dammit?” Garma whispers a word, and the door is flooded with flying sheets of white paper that converge and fold in on themselves into a life-size sort of origami man who nimbly dances around the room for a bit before Kellus, irritated, dispels him, making him collapse into a heap of brown and white parchment. Impressive, he thinks. “They can be mustered quickly,” she says, “and while they can’t hold their own in a fight, they’re vital when it comes to tying up enemy forces, seeing as they’re near impossible to kill.” Kellus has lost—his version of weaponized paper was a sort of unoriginal paper snowstorm. Combined with Garma’s research, though, the countryside is now patrolled by roving paper swarms that can solidify into regiments within seconds and retreat near-instantly (EPIC TECH +6 military, epic tech cannot be sold). Len-Tehran has been feeling somewhat homesick since she arrived in this lonely land. The Five were typically far too busy to hold audience with her. She has been staying at the residence of the one called Garma, although her hostess was usually preoccupied elsewhere. She chitters nervously in the chilly banquet hall. Most of her days were spent walking the castle grounds alone. How had the Five survived like this? How could they stand being alone in such a sad, sad place for so many years? Just then, there is a creaking sound, and the door closest to her opens. The one called Rucahn walks toward her chair, sits down next to her, and promptly presents her with a small bouquet of field flowers. She thanks him telepathically. They spend the rest of the day together talking, and Rucahn finally leaves, saying he has a house fire to stop in the old Ignati territory (+1 culture). Stavengar: 19, 10, 10, 24 The mine is finished, and plentiful adamantium finally flows into the districts of the great city of Stavengar (+6 income). Armor smithing with the metal is a chore—it is common knowledge among dwarf smiths that it’s impossible to bend adamant into angles greater 30 degrees. The Olthoi is currently under construction, but a proposed addition that would add on a wing dedicated to the worship of the Five Liosan gods is drawing fire from conservatives in the Senate, who say that the religion is foreign to dwarfen tradition. As word pours in from Legaros, survivors tell of the incursion of the metal men into their borders. As well as the Hunger, of course. Those who are infected are quarantined offshore in special prisons far underground, unlikely to ever see the light of day again. Regardless of the perceived threat on Manuk, an army is not raised this season. However, supply depots now dot the countryside, although the best-equipped of these are built underground, out of reach of non-dwarfen hands (+3 to recruit armies). The Ashelani Dominion: 20, 20, 9, 18 A fierce brood of chittering, screaming warriors is raised for the glory of the Pan-Ardunne Defence Organization (-10 income). The plaguehoppers, meanwhile are finally complete, loaded up with poisonous spores to which they have evolved a specific immunity (your armies may march across Hunger, each army has a 50% chance to drop a patch of Hunger after a battle). This is not researched at the Eir-i, Len-Torol rightfully fearing the wrath of PADO officials if it were found out that their insectoid allies had been working to weaponize the Hunger after all this time, especially after the horror stories pouring in from south Manuk. Meanwhile your chuteworms are wormier than ever, and they now give you a +5 expansion bonus, which as we both know is the highest possible bonus to a stat, therefore, I gleefully look forward to never having to write about them again because making them interesting is very, very hard. This is a victory for you as well as for me. Legaros: 14, 1, 16, 3 Not a single army is raised, and it looks as though Haven will be taken without a fight (nat 1 mitigates the 16). The proposed expansion to Liosa is also a failure. Minutes after his impassioned speech mustering the people of Legaros to defend their homeland from the metal menace, Trade Minister Dromand sets off for three of the exploratory ships along with his family, headed for parts unknown and effectively hijacking the voyage. Of the twenty ships left, all are boarded by rioting townsfolk. Crewmen are shoved overboard in panic. In the harbor, the weight of so many clamoring people on the docks causes their supports to buckle, making them sink slowly into the pier while refugees swim where they once stood. Entire legions of Ignati swoop down to perch on the rigging and masts of the ships that leave the harbor. No coordinated attempts to expand outwards are successful, naturally, and the ships that have not left the harbor by midday are destroyed from afar by Derultian barrages. Derult: 16, 10, 17, 13 Rusted Hand operatives are in place all throughout Manuk and even in Liosa, although on Ardunne Derultians are virtually unheard of. Their large information networks, combined with their ability to radio their progress and operations logs to Central, makes them an efficient groundwork force for your massive and often hard-to coordinate military (+3 military to operations on Liosa and Manuk). This is, however, the first military intelligence agency to ever exist. The Grinner appeals to GE001 for amnesty to Legaran captives in the war. The general seems to recognize the utility of such a move—these races can be better served to meet the needs of the Central Objective—that is—to terraform the desert to make it inhabitable for non-Derultians. However, Central only really wants Legaros for its natural resources—scanners have detected bountiful oil deposits under the nation’s peat bogs and forests that would be left to waste under organic rule (+1 culture). The expansion to the south makes headway but the profit, especially considering the costs incurred mustering soldiers to protect from outlaw raids, is fairly low as of yet (+4 income, -10 wealth). The open desert and scrubland between the solidified borders of the Derultian Union and the borders of the Mu’lakkan colonies is still a wild and unsafe place under the control of various criminal gangs, and is known among locals as “Rust Country.” It remains the only place to buy illegal weapons like magnet cannons, and, more recently, carbon locks, which have a 100% kill probability when deployed against organics and have been banned by Central, not because of the brutal nature inherent in their design, bur because they are resource inefficient and cannibalize the host robot’s operating systems. Many outlaw-designed weapon augments are also riddled with malware designed to hijack the host’s private radio channels. Fortunately, Central command radio is re-encrypted every day in a different Derultian alphabet, and only a few models have the processing power capable of deciphering the transmissions. The Mu’lakka Lands: 2, 12, 10, 14 A few stalwart Mu’lakkan tourists, determined beyond reason to get their money’s worth out of their Manuk Round Trip Excursion Tickets, have camped outside the walls of Haven, or rather, what remains of the walls after the artillery barrages, and are being led on tours around the city, occasionally pausing to marvel at “real-live Derultian soldiers.” While the robots are not so rare on Manuk, tourists from the home isles have usually only heard stories about them. Nonetheless, these foolhardy individuals are few and far between, and many tourists prefer to holiday on Liosa in the hauntingly beautiful lands of the Five. Meanwhile, to the south Mu’lakka is preparing for a “grand little war” of its own, as your citizens have taken to calling it. Hopes are high, and your military advisors expect the impending war with Big Island to be over in little more than two weeks. A navy of both high-flying scout airships as well as hovering skiffs meant to travel over water and ground has been assembled, and your other forces have been told to delay their advances until Kal’rog’s orders (-10 income, +1 navy). Galley jousting, called the “Grand Old Game” at home and denounced internationally by critics as “the most needlessly wasteful sport in all the world,” is nonetheless great fun to watch. High in the sky, airships girded with long, reinforced steel spars to act as lances maneuver around each other until a decisive blow is finally landed. Some matches are as long as forty minutes. Jousting as a custom was brought over from Legaros, where Reich immigrants had introduced it, but the sport has never been more popular than in Mu’lakka. Even the more traditional horse-based jousting, an ancient sport by modern standards, is kept alive and well here. Opportunities for corporate promotion, it should be noted, are endless, and famous jousting galleys often sport hundreds of logos plastered on their hulls and stitched into their balloons (+1 culture). Kaz’ur: 9, 20, 14, 1 The scattered Ignati living around Kaz’ur are reformed into some semblance of a night-fighting group, one that Jasura suspects will not be as effective as the original, whose deeds in Ignati folklore have been mythologized after the Age of Immortality’s end. Of all the races, the Ignati have bounced back the fastest population-wise from the initial culling of the living some thirty years ago and now make up a larger and more vocal portion of your demographic. Their race’s sort of predisposition against organized religion has proven irksome in the past, as well as their readiness to organize and lobby for what they want. Nevertheless, the new Wings of Death opportunity is offered as sort of a conciliatory gesture to the sometimes-rowdy dragon men (+5 offense). Meanwhile, due to lack of efficiency in your reform process, army costs are much higher than they were in the past (armies and defense forces now cost 12 income and 9 income, respectively; naval costs remain unchanged). Category:The Ledgers of Baldr